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Japan Times
BUSINESS / Tech
Nov 8, 2022

Following mass Twitter Japan firings, some call for legal action

As former employees in the U.S. mount a class-action lawsuit in the wake of job losses, speculation Elon Musk may have breached employment law in Japan grows across his platform.
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Nov 2, 2022

Selling a cleaner, affordable cooking fuel for Kenyan homes

Koko Networks in Nairobi supplies more than 675,000 households with clean-burning ethanol, which is used in the company's cookers and sold over an app.
Japan Times
BUSINESS / Tech
Oct 28, 2022

Elon Musk's Twitter ownership begins with firings and uncertainty

Musk has offered little clarity over how he will achieve the lofty ambitions he has outlined for the influential social media platform.
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Oct 21, 2022

America's new nuclear power industry has a Russian problem

U.S. firms developing a new generation of small nuclear power plants to help cut carbon emissions have a big problem: Only one company sells the fuel they need, and it's Russian.
Japan Times
BUSINESS / Companies
Oct 20, 2022

Tesla shares fall on sales miss as Elon Musk promises ‘epic’ year end

'We have excellent demand for Q4 and we expect to sell every car that we make for as far into the future as we can see,” Musk said.
Japan Times
Greater Bay Area, China report 2022
Oct 20, 2022

Wah Kwong: Charting a course for ever-expanding horizons

It takes guts, gumption and a game plan to navigate the oft-tricky waters of just about any business — especially in the expansive, ever-evolving maritime sector. While it is an industry steeped in time-tested tradition, it is also one that is tossed by tumultuous tides. Seven decades of experience...
Japan Times
BUSINESS / Companies
Oct 18, 2022

Murdoch plan to reunite Fox with News Corp. finds few fans

Several analysts said the potential recombination is unlikely to solve one of the key problems facing Fox and News Corp. — low valuations relative to their peers.
Gamers compete during the Electronic Entertainment Expo E3 at the Los Angeles Convention Center in 2017.
BUSINESS / Companies
Oct 24, 2023

Twitch and YouTube curb big-money deals for gaming superstars

For years, the leading livestreaming sites have competed for top gaming talent to bolster their services.
EF Polymer CEO Narayan Lal Gurjar (right) and COO Kunihiro Shimoji at the company in Onna, Okinawa Prefecture, in August
JAPAN / Society / Regional Voices: Okinawa
Oct 30, 2023

Organic polymer brings water to drought-hit farmlands

The India-born, Okinawa-nurtured product seeks to replace petroleum-derived polymers to promote sustainability.
Kioxia and Western Digital have held merger talks since 2021 but the negotiations have often stalled over a series of issues.
BUSINESS / Companies
Oct 27, 2023

Western Digital and Kioxia call off merger talks, source says

South Korea's SK Hynix — a major Kioxia investor — has said it does not back the deal due to its impact on its investment asset value.
Toyota’s gigacast rear component. The company plans to employ the gigacasting technology in making electric vehicles.
BUSINESS / Companies
Oct 30, 2023

Tesla’s latest disruption in carmaking draws followers in Japan

Carmakers in Japan are starting to embrace gigacasting as they seek to make up for lost ground in the shift to EVs.
A 23andMe DNA kit
BUSINESS / Companies
Oct 31, 2023

Drugmakers are set to pay 23andMe millions to access consumer DNA

Under the new agreement, 23andMe will provide GSK with access to anonymized DNA data from customers who have agreed to share their information.
Petr Aven in Moscow to attend Russia Business week in in 2018
WORLD / Crime & Legal
Nov 1, 2023

Squeezed by sanctions, some oligarchs head home to Putin's Russia

The penalties have destroyed the standing of many wealthy Russians abroad who remained silent or avoided direct criticism of Putin over the war.
Rapid improvements in image generation have spurred artists to push back on generative AI startups, which ingest vast troves of internet data in order to generate content like pictures or text.
BUSINESS / Tech
Nov 6, 2023

Dall-E 3 is so good it’s stoking a revolt against AI scraping

It hasn’t helped much that OpenAI’s new process for artists who want to exclude their data from the system is time-consuming and complex.
Meta has said it will bar political advertisers from using Facebook's generative AI tools.
BUSINESS / Companies
Nov 7, 2023

Meta to restrict use of generative AI tools in political adverts

The move may limit campaigns' access to tools lawmakers have warned could turbocharge the spread of election misinformation.
People stand outside an Apple Store in Shanghai as the new iPhone 15 officially goes on sale across China on Sept. 22.
BUSINESS / Companies
Nov 8, 2023

Apple postpones next year's iPhone and Mac software to fix bugs

Rather than adding new features, company engineers have now been tasked with fixing flaws and improving software performance, sources have said.
Humane has officially launched its long-awaited Ai Pin. The device will be available to order starting Nov. 16.
BUSINESS / Tech
Nov 10, 2023

Humane's Ai Pin launches its campaign to replace phones

The device can magnetically clip onto clothing and will cost $699 with a $24-a-month subscription — which will come with unlimited data and phone calls.
Port Plus is a training and education facility in Yokohama built by and for general contractor Obayashi, a storied Japanese builder that traces its roots back to 1892.
BUSINESS
Nov 16, 2023

Wooden high-rise in Yokohama grows Japan’s timber ambitions

Port Plus, which was finished last year, is composed mainly of 540 wooden rigid cross-joints.
An assembly line at Honda Motor's  Performance Manufacturing Center in Marysville, Ohio, in November 2016
BUSINESS / Companies
Nov 11, 2023

Honda will give autoworkers 11% raise after UAW’s big wins

While nonunion automakers race to boost pay and keep the union out of its gates, the UAW is trying to organize foreign-owned factories in the U.S.
Ports operator DP World halted internet connectivity at its terminals in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Fremantle on Friday to prevent "any ongoing unauthorized access" to its network, a company spokesperson said.
ASIA PACIFIC / Crime & Legal
Nov 12, 2023

Australia ports firm fights to restore operations after cyber incident

Cybersecurity experts said inadequate safeguards and the stockpiling of sensitive customer information have made Australia a lucrative target for hackers.
Alex Zhavoronkov, founder and chairman of Insilico Medicine, poses at his research facility in Suzhou, China, on Oct. 31.
WORLD / Science & Health
Nov 14, 2023

Race for first drug discovered by AI nears key milestone

Insilico Medicine's AI-developed drug for idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis is in midstage trials in the U.S. and China.
An employee works on the assembly line in a hangar of an aircraft manufacturer near the town of Odolena Voda, Czech Republic, in July 2017.
BUSINESS / Companies
Nov 20, 2023

Central Europe's defense companies spy African opportunity

Former Warsaw Pact members are well-placed to maintain or upgrade many weapon systems used on the continent.
By Monday, OpenAI's board were overseeing a company in name only, with virtually the whole staff committed to a pledge of seeing them go or quitting the firm for fired former CEO Sam Altman's project at Microsoft.
BUSINESS / Tech / FOCUS
Nov 21, 2023

AI doomsayers blamed in OpenAI's undoing

Harsh critics see a deeply troubled startup that fell victim to the pearl-clutching of an incompetent board that was divorced from reality.
The buzz surrounding MediaTek casts a spotlight on growing competition between semiconductor firms that are exploiting the use of AI to grab a larger share of the smartphone business.
BUSINESS / Tech
Nov 28, 2023

AI chip boom fuels Taiwan firm’s 40% rally, beating Qualcomm

A five-month rally in MediaTek looks set to extend as booming demand for smartphones and a promising new AI chip brighten the company’s outlook.
A Rakuten Mobile branch in Tokyo. Rakuten is set for another tough year in 2024, at a time when rivals are on the attack with competitive pricing and reward campaigns.
BUSINESS / Companies
Nov 29, 2023

Rakuten's mobile misadventure: from ambitious plan to millstone

Founder and CEO Hiroshi Mikitani's vision of a low-cost network using cloud-based software and cheap hardware did not pan out.
Warren Buffett (left), CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, and vice chairman Charlie Munger attend a shareholders meeting in Omaha, Nebraska, in May 2019. Munger died on Tuesday at the age of 99, according to U.S. media reports.
BUSINESS / Companies
Nov 29, 2023

After Munger's death, Berkshire Hathaway succession in focus

Berkshire has had a succession plan since at least 2006 when Buffett, then 75, told shareholders the company would be prepared for his departure.
Split over the leadership of Sam Altman, board members and executives at OpenAI turned on one another. Their brawl exposed the cracks at the heart of the artificial intelligence movement.
BUSINESS / Tech
Dec 11, 2023

Inside OpenAI’s crisis over the future of artificial intelligence

From the moment it was created in 2015, OpenAI was primed to combust.
A man holding a child crosses a damaged bridge after Typhoon Doksuri, in Zhuozhou, China, on Aug. 7.
BUSINESS / Markets
Dec 12, 2023

Storm assault on Chinese ports a wake-up call for climate risks

Typhoon Doksuri delivered Beijing's worst flooding in more than 50 years, shuttering factories, collapsing homes and displacing tens of thousands.
Attendees play the Fate/Samurai Remnant video game on PlayStation 5 video game consoles at the Tokyo Game Show in September.
BUSINESS / Companies
Dec 21, 2023

Sony highlights PS5 momentum as hardware sales top 50 million

Sony is seeing strong momentum for its PlayStation 5 console, a senior games executive has said, with lifetime sales exceeding 50 million units and the company recording its best-ever Black Friday period sales for the device.

Longform

Tetsuzo Shiraishi, speaking at The Center of the Tokyo Raids and War Damage, uses a thermos to explain how he experienced the U.S. firebombing of March 1945, when he was just 7 years old.
From ashes to high-rises: A survivor’s account of Tokyo’s postwar past